iTunes Movie Store: What Features?

After reading this article in the New York Times, I started thinking about what an iTunes Movie Store would look like. From the sounds of this article in the New York Times, Hollywood is just not getting it: people want something like the iTunes Music Store. It's that simple. (While a rental or subscription model is also interesting, I'm gonna focus today just on the purchase model.)

Getting a video
Ideally here's what should happen. You think of a video (movie, television show, etc.) you want to watch. You go to the iTunes Movie Store (or whatever competitor might exist). You find the song, purchase it, download it, and watch it. As you now own it, it sits in your library ready for you to watch whenever.

This could be very cool. How great would it be to be able to download entire seasons of The SImpsons and have them sitting on your computer whenever you want them? This would be the equivalent of the iTunes Music Store's albums. This would work with movies with sequels; seasons of TV shows; collections of the work of certain directors, actors, etc.; and so on. I've always thought that I'd like to go back and watch some obscure television that I missed or just feel nostalgic about (the 1980s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, Small Wonder, the cunnilingus episode of Seinfeld, the totally un-politically correct early Looney Tunes cartoons, and other such assorted crap).

Copies of the movie
As the limit on burning playlists won't work, I'd suggest a time limitation on copying movies. For instance, you can burn up to three copies but then need to wait six-months or some similar length before you can burn again. The trick here would be to find a reasonable number that would keep consumers happy (those who want back-ups, want it on vacations, etc.) but prevent casual pirates making lots of copies. I think iTunes limits on burning playlists strikes a reasonable balance and similar numbers can be found for movies.

As with current iTunes Music Store protected AAC files, unlimited digital copies should be able to be made. This is especially true as long as you can't re-download your previously downloaded but lost files. (This is something that Napster does but the iTunes Music Store still doesn't.)

iTunes existing limitation on purchased music to five computers seems reasonable for movies as well.

Download speed
Probably the biggest bummer of this entire process is going to be the download speed. I'm sure some techie solution can help remedy this, such as downloading simultaneously from multiple servers. Still, if they can get it down to 30 minutes relatively easily as the New York Times article suggests, that wouldn't be such a big deal.

Pricing
Albums on the iTunes Music Store are anywhere from 2/3 to 1/2 the price of an album on a CD (assuming generally $15-$20 on a CD while only $10 on the iTunes Music Store). A similar cut for DVDs would be perfect. Rather than the $20 or so, how about $9.99? Episodes of hour-long TV shows could be $3.99 while half-hour episodes could be $1.99. Something like that would sound reasonable to me. If the prices aren't less than that, I'll stick to buying them in China (where the non-pirated versions are somewhere around $10).